make ash and leave the dust behind
by possibilist
Summary: 'You touch her cheek after a step in her direction, and then you kiss her quickly, and then you say, "Professor Fabray."' Quinn in grad school. Drabble. For Faberry Week—Day Six: College!Faberry.


summary: 'You touch her cheek after a step in her direction, and then you kiss her quickly, and then you say, "Professor Fabray."' Quinn in grad school. Drabble. For Faberry week—Day Six: College!Faberry.

an (1): i'm in new york. i'd go here for grad school in a heartbeat. this is fluffy. your reviews are always so sweet. x

an (2): title from MRMS' "hurricane," which is lovely.

...

make ash and leave the dust behind

.

_burn, burn, flame up. sparkle in trees of light._

—pablo neruda, "xvii"

.

Her skin is hot. Not normal warm, but _hot_, like she has a fever, all the time. It doesn't matter if it's summer—when her hair gets long and light and she tastes like iced tea and oranges when she kisses you—or if it's fall; every September, she cuts her hair short again and wears a few more cardigans, and the tan against her skin fades along with the leaves that match the hazel of her eyes. Or winter, those months when she wears scarves and tries to make shapes with her breath in the cold air; she smells sweet like hot chocolate and she makes snow angels and wears riding boots and knee high socks and pea coats, and her joints pop. In the spring it's almost like her skin grows even warmer, with the sunrise or the gradual shedding of clothes until she's wearing her sundresses and oxfords again; she sneezes when the blossoms bloom and her laugh floats along with the breeze.

For four years as her girlfriend and four years before that as a variety of different things, you've learned this: She literally runs a degree higher than normal—you've gone with her to the hospital enough times to know that when her fever breaks after a bout with pneumonia, or a lung infection, or another plural effusion, her temperature only gets down to 99 degrees Fahrenheit.

Sometimes when she curls up against you at night, you listen to her heart flutter away behind her ribcage and feel the constant flush of her skin. Sometimes you wonder what it means, that she's never quite calm. If it'll ever move to you—passive transportation, higher to lower energy—because Quinn Fabray is _burning_, that you've known since the first time she kissed you. You think sometimes she's destructive, and she is, and sometimes it's scary, and sometimes you want to run away, flee as fast as you can because you're worried about smoke filling your lungs and cells disappearing from your skin.

But now you have an apartment together, a little, beautiful studio close to NYU. You have hardwood floors that she slides around on in wool socks, and you have a kitchen that she uses as a place to fling flour around while she bakes cupcakes every Saturday. You have a window that you sit in front of while she reads and you play with her soft hair. You have a couch and chairs and bookcases and a record player and a dresser and towels in the bathroom that you'd picked together at Marimekko. You're making a _life_, and it's good. You have a bed together.

.

You're shopping at the Madewell on 5th—her favourite—before her first day of her second year of grad school at NYU, where she's studying creative writing, when she sighs. Her profile is slightly crumpled when you look over. "What's wrong?" you ask, because you're pretty sure it has nothing to do with the fall collection that she's been in love with for a month now.

She shrugs, picks up an orange stripped sweater.

"Quinn," you say. You stop riffling through a row of skirts, trying to find her size, and the absence of the clink of hangers makes the air around you seem still.

She turns so that she's looking at you. "I'm nervous."

"About tomorrow?"

She nods.

"You're going to do great," you say. "You're smart and funny and talented and your students are going to love you."

She smiles, then, a little rise of the corners of her mouth, but it's genuine.

You touch her cheek after a step in her direction, and then you kiss her quickly, and then you say, "Professor Fabray."

She laughs. Embers.

.

She comes home after the fourth week of school and plops down on your couch, kicking off her flats and burrowing her face into a pillow. She's home a few minutes late and you'd (secretly) been getting worried, because you usually see her before you leave to go to your show, and lots of times she greets you with a kiss and then sits in the audience—"Because it's Broadway and I love it almost as much as I love you," she says—and afterward you pick up dessert before you go home, where she writes and you read books she tells you to. You shower together. You make love.

Today she grabs a blanket from the back and clutches it to her chest. You sit down in the space her curled form leaves and thread your fingers through her short hair. Her entire body starts shaking.

"What's wrong?" you ask.

She takes a few deep breaths and then untucks her head from the pillow. Her cheeks are wet but there's a huge smile on her face, she says, "Nothing."

You roll your eyes. "You were _laughing_."

She nods, then sits up.

"What's so funny?"

"A student asked me out for coffee today." She starts laughing again.

"Why is that hilarious to you?"

Quinn looks at you like you're insane. "You don't understand."

"Was she pretty?"

Quinn's laughter, at this point, is mostly quiet, little gasps. Her skin is even warmer now. "A _boy _asked me out."

"I still don't see why this is funny." Quinn is _beautiful_, and apparently a little oblivious. "You get hit on all the time."

Quinn snorts now. "He was just so awkward and he tried to recite a poem and—_Rachel_," she says.

Her face is so amused that you find a little laugh scorching your throat. It feels good when she makes you come alive, too.

.

You have friends over for Thanksgiving. Quinn spends all day cooking, and you attempt to help but mostly just sing into a turkey baster until Quinn tells you, "Rachel, one day that may be holding half of our children's DNA, so refrain from rapping, please."

She's wearing a Yale sweater and jeans and purple argyle socks and an apron from Judy. She currently has her hand inside of the turkey, tugging at the stuffing inside, and her hair is falling out of its ponytail messily.

"You want to have children with me?" you ask.

She tugs the stuffing from the turkey's butt triumphantly. "Rachel," she says. "Of course."

You trade the turkey baster for a wooden spoon and sing love songs and lullabies for the rest of the day. They're sweet but you're in charge of the pies, anyway.

.

You go to Lima—Quinn wants to, because she misses Judy more than she'll ever really admit and you don't argue, because you miss your dads, even though you'll admit it—for the week of winter break you're granted. Quinn stays with Judy for a few nights and you stay with your dads, but you also stay over and so does she, which is nothing new by now. Her house is warm and so is yours, in all the ways that count. You go back to New York a few days before Christmas to start working on a workshop for a new show. You put up a little tree while Quinn's out one day, and she comes home with groceries and a tiny Menorah.

.

Quinn finishes her master's thesis the day before Valentine's day, and you congratulate her on emerging from her writing coma until you actually _read _the manuscript.

Then you cry. Because it's breathtaking and meaningful and a story that needs to be told.

You don't even know what to tell her, and she looks at your nervously over the tips of her glasses when you close the last page, so you lean over in bed and kiss her instead.

The words, "I love your brain," bubble from your throat, and she closes her eyes and moans, and you suck on the skin by her collarbones hard enough to leave marks, because she's not smoke, because she's solid, because she's _yours_.

Sometimes, you're convinced that you're water—you calm her down; you put out her destruction. Other times, however—when you plunge two fingers as deeply as you can and a sound rips from her throat that sounds something like your name—you're certain you're just gasoline.

.

You spend the majority of spring break in the hospital, which is sad but not surprising. Quinn spends the majority of spring break with a tube sticking out of her chest, draining fluid from around her left lung. It's been two years since the last time she'd needed a chest tube, but her fever hit harder this time—pneumonia in March has been like clockwork, though—and you had woken up draped in her shivering form, her skin a million degrees.

But now, after four days with a chest tube and a lot of naps, Scrabble (she usually wins, even on morphine), and a million get well cards, the doctors take the tube out and stitch up the inch-long incision. Quinn wears a sling but her cough is a million times better, and you walk around Central Park after she gets released.

She doesn't say anything, and neither do you, but the snow is melting and Quinn's hand tucked into yours is warm.

.

She has three weeks of classes left. You bring her lunch one day, during office hours, and a boy-man is standing outside her door, looking nervous.

She smiles when she sees you, and she waves you in. You put her favourite salad down on her cluttered desk and she whispers, "Did you see that guy out there? He's _still _trying to ask me out."

"Have you told him _anything _about yourself?" You pick up a little white bird figurine, which is heavy enough that you suppose it's a paper weight.

Quinn nods. "He doesn't believe me, I think."

You roll your eyes, then take a few steps around her desk. "Hasn't he heard who I am?" you ask, your voice low.

Her pupils dilate and you glance outside of her open door to make sure the boy-man is watching, and then you fist your hands in her hair and _kiss _her.

When you walk outside a minute or so later, leaving Quinn to straighten her hair and her makeup and also her skirt, the boy-man is standing there, unblinking.

"I'm Rachel," you say. "I'm sure Professor Fabray's told you all about me."

He swallows and heads towards the bathroom.

Quinn rolls her eyes from inside her office.

"Enjoy your salad, baby," you say, waving from the hallway. "I'll see you when you get home."

.

Quinn gets her master's degree and you win a Tony.

"What are you going to do now?" you ask, trying to return your breathing to normal, although the expanse of her skin is still making it difficult. You've had the conversation before, and she's been undecided as to her future plans.

"I think," she says slowly, "I'm going to get my PhD. At Columbia."

You smile into her chest. "Are you?"

"Yes," she says. "And teach and write, while I'm there. And work on some PR for my novel."

You stop your kisses to her left breast. "Your novel?"

"They want to publish my manuscript."

"Quinn!" you squeal.

She nods. Tears fill her eyes.

"Quinn," you say, this time softly. You kiss her differently now, in these moments, gently and with _care_. She needs to know how proud of her you are, and you've learned that, even though she can write _novels_, sometimes words fail her too.

You've also learned that Quinn burns herself up, Quinn burns _everything _down, but Quinn knows how to start over, again and again, like a forest after a fire, with healthy new plants that spring forward, using the plentiful ash as fertilizer, reaching towards the sun.

"I'm so proud of you," you say.

"I'm so proud of you, too," Quinn says. Then she laughs. Then tells you, "I'm going to be in college forever."

You laugh, too. "I love you, Professor Fabray."


End file.
